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I hesitate to comment in the Bohemian as they have over-edited my comments before but, I sure agree with Padi Selwyn; the current growth rate of permitting more wineries especially in rural neighborhoods needs to be reviewed more carefully. The one big industry in our county has for too long enjoyed the full support of our county supervisors. Their appointees to the planning commission have rubber stamped too many of the projects brought before them.
With a weakened coastal commission, and more investors seeking to put wineries on our coastal hills, we need to Elect a 5th district supervisor not beholden to the big moneyed interests.
Ken Sund

This rampant over-development by the wine industry impacts not only Sonoma County, but our neighbors in Napa, Mendocino, Lake, and more recently Solano Counties. I enjoy wine and there are certainly many good grape growers and wine makers in our region, to which the wine industry makes important contributions. However, given that wine is a boom-and-bust product, it has become a serious threat to our economy--too many eggs in the same basket. 96% of the veggies and fruit sold in Sonoma County are imported from outside, according to Go Local, which means that we are no longer a food ag county. In terms of food security, this is a dangerous imbalance that must be addressed.

Rather than controlling sediment discharge from logging that has filled the "core" coho habitat of Elk River, the Regional Water Board voted to let HRC alter the river channel with heavy equipment from the historically deeply incised channel with long deep pools that are deeply shaded by tall riparian forests to a wide flat "V" shaped channel that lacks sheltering vegetation. The plan is to destroy forever the channel that naturally evolved and supported the North Coast's most thriving salmon runs. The Regional Water Board reasoned that the cold water fishery must be sacrificed so that an industrial waste ditch can be built, at taxpayer expense, that is designed to increase logging's pollution load allocation.

Elk River Residents propose low impact management to encourage the channel to incise down through the eight feet of timber sludge that clogs the channel and entombs spawning gravels and rearing pools. We have notified California Fish and Wildlife and requested permits to proceed prior to early rains this fall. Many residents have volunteered to help remove obstructions to flood water conveyance, including landowners whose homes, farms, and orchards are severely and frequently flooded as a result of the obstructions to flow. Please call or write CA Fish and Wildlife and CDF and ask them to implement the low impact methods that residents have requested since 1998, and/or volunteer to help. Funds, and your efforts are desperately needed. Contact ELKRRA or Elk River Residents' Association at: elkrra@gmail.com if you can help.

Residents also propose a restoration forest; one planned to regrow forest cover resembling old growth forest by thinning from below the canopy. The methods are designed to comply with the Timber Production Zoning, but would prioritize the stabilization of the rapidly eroding landscape while sequestering carbon at maximum biological potential. This method is designed to recover the deeply incised channel so important to salmon and residents' continued existence. Forty years of abject regulatory failure to prevent severe cumulative impacts provide no other feasible alternative than a restoration forest.

I was remembering laughter just fine up to "And, speaking of women, I thought Caitlyn Jenner was actually a man?" We are not a joke, and we are not disguising ourselves to fool anyone. We are who we way we are. This is transphobia, and it's bigotry, whether intentional or not. This has no place on the pages of your nominally progressive rag. This is no more appropriate than racist humor.

William Ericson,
Yes, the Karuk are a tribe in the Klamath River basin. The Kashia Pomo, as you know, are the indigenous people whose ancestral territory includes the Gualala River watershed. These two peoples are separated by a few hundred miles, as are the logging activities this story describes.
Will

The ''Forest Service'' are the pimps of the Federal Government. They ''service'' industry. They not only sell logging rights, they sell mineral rights, grazing rights and more. Their job is not to protect the forests, but to use them and make money off them. Most of their ''protection'' involves keeping the public away with use fees and closed roads and overpriced campgrounds so you do not see the extent of their pandering. Clear cutting? No problem. If you don;'t think so, go up to the Mount Shasta area and get off road. You'll be appaled. And if you go off road in Oregon or Washington you'll just throw up.

This is very interesting research. Another good example of the interface between humans and the natural order. We still have much to learn about birds and their true benefit to humans. I think tagging birds, like we have tagged other wild animals, will continue to provide us with valuable information like how do birds accommodate to the changing habitats and our environment. And, I hope we keep protecting our environment to provide a healthy place for birds to flourish.

Quoting from the piece, "Yet buried in the pages of the proposition is a specific change to the licensing framework. In just a handful of words, the AUMA creates a new cultivation license with no limit on the scale of cultivation, effectively repealing protections for small farms that were enacted by the state Legislature."

Unless a state ballot measure is a CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT, rather than a simple ballot measure, anything and everything can be changed by the state legislature. It is more work and money to lobby to change it to Craft Cannabis people's liking but it could and should happen. All this potential gloom and doom of wiping out the small grower can be changed by the legislature, especially if the elected Prohibitionists finally realize, as some of them already have, that Craft Cannabis cultivation is a sizeable part of their constituents' local economy, and has been in some parts for 30-40 years--sort of kill the goose that lays the golden egg theory! Now that it is in the "mainstream", Craft Cannabis money flowing in the local economy is bigger than ever. Allow the local economy to be killed and they will be voted out of office and replaced. The legislature can change whatever they want by passing future legislation, slyly or overtly, good or bad. The Craft Cannabis side just has to work harder for that to happen to what the Cannabis people like. That means people like Hezekiah and his organization has to raise more funds and hire more lobbyists than they have now. Cannabis is in mainstream politics all across the country and the pro-Cannabis PAC groups have to work it like all the other special interest lobby groups.

In all the states that have passed adult use rec legal, the original ballot measure provisions have been tweaked and outright changed from their original intent. Legislatures will change future ballot measures everywhere in the states that pass adult use/rec legal. It just means and boils down to more work for the Cannabis PACs.

"but the dark side of his success is that, most likely, he consumed his siblings—not uncommon in the unsentimental world of the barn owl." I'm sorry, this is not factual. They only consume siblings after they have died, or maybe almost died. They do not engage in siblicide.

Also, vineyards that kill birds can never be bird friendly. It's not a few non-native songbirds that get trapped and killed, it's more like thousands. and it's not ok.

I appreciate that vineyards are moving towards non-toxic, predator-friendly practices! Barn owls and bluebirds are a vineyards best friends as long as no poison is used. This is a great steady and much-needed, but there have been others - just recently in fact. Another study was published in the local Ag-Alert paper in April of this year! I look forward to the results of this new study.

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Neither SB 1190 nor AB 2002 are necessary. Existing laws regarding ex parte communications with coastal commissioners requiring that treasures complete the form with detailed information. If the commission wants to increased transparency, they could post the forms online prior to a hearing. Oral reports about X partake medications could be followed – up by a written form that is posted online.